The Emergence of Ottoman Music and Local Modernity

By the turn of the eighteenth century this Ottoman musical ‘renaissance’ involved also musical theory and notation (with Osman Dede and Cantemir). A fuller development of the new conceptions of usul and melody emerged in the generation after Cantemir (with Zaharya, Haham Musi, et al.). This new music involved a synthesis of Persian, Turkic, and Byzantine elements. The entrance of non-Muslims—notably Greek cantors (psaltes)—into courtly composition and performance brought with them some techniques of Byzantine music, seen even two generations earlier in Itri’s Naat-ı Peygamberi. While Byzantine music lacks an usul system per se, it had a richly developed melodic line, which increased in complexity toward the end of the seventeenth century (e.g. Itri’s contemporary, Petros Bereketis [1665–1725], who was evidently familiar with Ottoman music). The stylistic emphasis of Ottoman music was now on an inward turning fusion of secular and mystical styles, including secularized allusions to the music of the Greek church. At the same time the leading Greek church composers began to incorporate elements from secular Ottoman music. This became the musical manifestation of the “locally generated modernity” of the long eighteenth century—to which both Mevlevi dervishes and non-Muslim elites contributed—and left its imprint on Ottoman music throughout much of the nineteenth century as well

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